Contents

She was born in Darjeeling where her parents were vacationing to escape the heat of the plains during the summer. Her father, William H. Boyce, was a Judge at the Calcutta high-court, then an institution of the British imperial government. Her mother Nora (née Gardiner) was a granddaughter of the historian Samuel Rawson Gardiner.[1]

In 1948, Boyce was appointed lecturer of Iranian Studies at SOAS, specialising in Manichaean, Zoroastrian Middle Persian and Parthian texts. In 1952, she was awarded a doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Cambridge. At SOAS, she was promoted to Reader (1958–1961) and subsequently awarded the University of London's professorship in Iranian Studies following Henning's transfer to the University of California at Berkeley.

Boyce remained professor at SOAS until her retirement in 1982, continuing as Professor Emerita and a professorial research associate until her death in 2006. Her speciality remained the religions of speakers of Eastern Iranian languages, in particular Manichaeanism and Zoroastrianism.

In 1963–64, Boyce spent a research year among orthodox Zoroastrians of the 24 villages of Yazd, Iran. The results of her research there were formative to her understanding of Zoroastrianism and she discovered that much of the previously established scholarship on the ancient faith was terribly misguided. In 1975, Boyce presented the results of her research at her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series at Oxford University. In the same year she published the first volume of her magnum opus, The History of Zoroastrianism, which appeared in the monograph series Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden:Brill). Her Ratanbai Katrak lecture series were published in 1977 as A Persian Stronghold of Zoroastrianism.

In 1979, Boyce published Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, which not only summarised her previous publications (in particular volume 1 of History), but anthologised the role of Zoroastrianism during subsequent eras as well. This was followed by volume 2 of History of Zoroastrianism in 1982 (also as a part of the Orientalistik monograph series), and volume 3 in 1991 which she co-authored with Frantz Grenet. In 1992, she published Zoroastrianism: Its Antiquity and Constant Vigour as part of the Columbia Lectures on Iranian Studies which she had delivered there in 1985.